Perceiving the desperate situation of the respectable officer, Captain Granville stayed not to question on a subject that spoke so plainly for itself. Hastening back into the piazza with his subalterns, he reached the area just as the remaining troops, intended for the occupation of the fort, were crossing the drawbridge, headed by Colonel St. Julian. To this officer he communicated the situation of the sufferer, when an order was given for the instant attendance of the head of the medical staff. After a careful examination and dressing of the wound, the latter pronounced the case not altogether desperate. A great deal of blood had been lost, and extreme weakness had been the consequence, but still the Surgeon was not without hope that his life might yet be preserved, although, of course, he would be a cripple for the remainder of his days. It might have been assumed, that the hope yet held out, of preservation of life on any terms, would have been hailed with some manifestation of grateful emotion, on the part of Miss Montgomerie; but it was remarked and commented on, by those who were present, that this unexpectedly favorable report, so far from being received with gratitude and delight, seemed to cast a deeper gloom over the spirit of this extraordinary girl. The contrast was inexplicable. She had tended him at the moment when he was supposed to be dying, with all the anxious solicitude of a fond child; and now that there was a prospect of his recovery, there was a sadness in her manner that told too plainly the discomfort of her heart. "An unaccountable girl!" said Cranstoun, as he sipped his wine that day after dinner, in the mess-room at Detroit. "I always said she was the child of the devil." "Child of the devil in soul, if you will," observed Granville, "but a true woman--a beautiful, a superb woman in person at least, did she appear this morning, when we first entered the room--did she not, Henry?" "Beautiful indeed," was the reply--"yet, I confess, she more awed than pleased me. I could not avoid, even amid that melancholy scene, comparing her to a beautiful casket, which, on opening, is found to contain not a gem of price, but a subtle poison, contact with which is fatal; or to a fair looking fruit, which, when divided, proves to be rotten at the core." "Allegorical, by all that is good, bad, and indifferent," exclaimed Villiers. "How devilish severe you are, Henry, upon the pale Venus. It is hardly fair in you thus to rate Gerald's intended." "Gerald's intended! God forbid." This was uttered with an energy that startled his companions. Perceiving that the subject gave him pain, they discontinued allusion to the lady in question, further than to inquire how she was to be disposed of, and whether she was to remain in attendance on her uncle.